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Wholesale Investor’s Crypto Convention

Another day, another blockchain and crypto event. This time, the latest Wholesale Investor pitch fest in Sydney featuring companies that are looking to raise funding from accredited investors – either to invest in other crypto businesses, or as equity in their blockchain projects, or via a token sale.

The pitches were punctuated by a number of keynote presentations, and panel discussions, to provide some context on what is going on in crypto, from a market, technology and regulatory perspective.

The presenting companies ranged from Xplora Capital, a specialist fund investing in blockchain technology, to Enosi, a platform for retail energy distribution. There were a few projects linked to the entertainment and event industry (Zimrii,FairAccess and Hunter Corp Records), and a couple operating in precious metals (MetaliCoin and Kinesis Monetary System). Ethereal Capital is focused on crypto mining, while Horizon State is bringing blockchain technology to voting systems. Systema is using AI on the blockchain to personalise e-commerce, Amber is like Acorns for crypto, Sendy* is an e-mail engagement platform, and Tatau* is building a distributed computation platform for GPU-based machines.

There was no doubting the level of interest in blockchain and crypto among the audience, but whether they are ready to invest is still open to debate. With the markets sending mixed signals (despite the generally positive industry news in recent weeks), institutional money continues to sit on the sidelines awaiting buying opportunities. My guess is they probably won’t want to wait too long, especially if we see the adoption of new security token standards, crypto-backed ETFs, and other asset diversification.

Meanwhile, over at Chartered Accountants ANZ, there was a very interesting seminar on the taxation of crypto assets. While there have been some positive developments (such as dropping GST on crypto transactions), the ATO is still being somewhat ambiguous about the treatment of crypto for CGT and income tax purposes. In particular, whether crypto assets will be recognised on the revenue account, or on the capital account, has implications for crystallising capital gains (or losses), and for carrying forward certain revenue gains (or losses). The inference being, there is a desire to extract as much as possible from accrued capital gains, while minimising the ability to rollover losses (especially given that many investors are probably sitting on unrealised losses if they bought in to the market during the late 2017 bull run). Essentially, crypto is not recognised as currency (whereas in Japan, for example, crypto is recognised as a legal form of payment), but as an asset that at a minimum, represents a bundle of rights. But the same could be said of a software license…

Next week: Tales from Tasmania

* Declaration of interest: Sendy and Tatau are both clients of Techemy, a company I consult to.